


been in the dark since the day we met

by hi_raeth



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Fusion, F/M, Getting Back Together, Mr and Mrs Smith fusion, Reylo AU Week, With some minor changes, it's a reimagining not a rewrite, okay major changes, somehow still more fluff than smut I have failed this movie
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-26
Updated: 2018-08-26
Packaged: 2019-07-02 22:20:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,693
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15805680
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hi_raeth/pseuds/hi_raeth
Summary: For five years, Ben and Rey Solo were the happiest couple in the world. They fell in love at first sight while on vacation in Takodana, moved into an adorable little house in the suburbs, and enjoyed the kind of impossibly happy marriage that only exists in fiction.Then Ben found out that Rey works for a spy agency called Resistance, and Rey discovered Ben is the infamous assassin Kylo Ren, and they’ve been divorced ever since.(It's the Mr. and Mrs. Smith AU I never thought I'd write.)





	been in the dark since the day we met

**Author's Note:**

> For Reylo AU Week, **Day 6 - Crossover.**
> 
> Title from Florence + the Machine's _Which Witch._

The first time she meets Kylo Ren again, Rey flinches as if she’s seen a ghost and runs out a side exit before he can spot her.

The mission isn’t a total bust, thankfully – she’s partnered up with Finn tonight, and he very gently tells her to go wait in the car while he does what needs to be done. He finds her sitting in the passenger seat with her knees drawn to her chest and her cheeks tear-streaked, and simply sighs her name sadly and engulfs her in a warm hug before they make their escape.

The second time she spots him across a crowded room, Rey takes a deep breath and tells herself she isn’t going to panic, she’s a spy for fuck’s sake, remaining cool and unflappable is supposed to be her _thing_ , and it’s not like he’s still got any effect on her or–

His eyes meet hers. Rey panics, and then freaks out even more when she realizes he’s blocking her only exit. She takes a few steps backwards and melts into the crowd gathering by the buffet table, slips her phone out of her clutch just long enough to send Rose an SOS.

Minutes later the fire alarm is wailing and everyone’s rushing to the exit as the sprinklers begin to ruin carefully constructed up-dos and pricey dry-clean only garments. In a sea of panicked people Kylo remains steady as a rock, and Rey _swears_ he reaches out to brush his hand against hers when she scurries past him along with the rest of the crowd.

The third time she’s in a tiny, pitch-black supply room lit only by the screen of her tablet, a pair of earphones dangling half-in, half-out of her ears as she waits to pick something up from the bug she’d planted earlier. The door is yanked open, light floods into the room and blinds her, and suddenly a figure comes stumbling in.

Rey presses the tablet to her chest and scrambles up to her feet. “Excuse me, this room is occu–”

The tiny overhead light comes on, and she finds herself face to face with her ex-husband.

“-pied.”

“I’m sure you can make room for one more, sweetheart,” Kylo steps closer with a smirk, locks the door behind him with a pointed click.

She refuses to give in, to move backwards, but that’s exactly the kind of stubbornness that’s landed her in trouble all her life and tonight is no different. Suddenly she’s just inches away from the man she once shared a life with, his familiar warmth and scent threatening to swallow her whole as Kylo crosses his arms and considers her with a tilt of his head.

“Hello, Rey.”

Where does he get off, coming in all arrogant smirk and cocky quip only to drop his voice into a gentle whisper while he looks at her the same way he used to back when they were living a lie? She’s missed that look, has dreamt of it nearly every other night for the past two years, but if he thinks he can just show up now and try to make a fool out of her again with those old tricks–

“I thought you were dead,” Rey blurts out, a stopgap to prevent other things from tumbling past her lips – stupid, soft, sentimental things. “No one saw you, after the car–”

“Isn’t that what you wanted?” he asks evenly, as if they’re not talking about her having to deal with her husband’s death on her conscience, as if there was ever a time when she wanted him dead and gone from her life.

She thinks of the day it all went wrong, the day everything clicked into place and they nearly tore their house down trying to disarm each other. “ _It’s a metaphor”,_ she’d laughed brokenly at Finn when they went back a week later to assess the damage. “ _The house represents our marriage, and we fucking_ destroyed _it.”_

And then, a second later because she was disgusted by her own pretentiousness and uncomfortable with his look of sympathy: “ _That’s what a metaphor is, right? Should’ve just stayed in college and finished up my degree; I’d probably know what a metaphor is. I’d probably have a normal job and a normal life. I’d probably have a husband who didn’t lie to me from the very start and then try to ki–”_

Rey still remembers the way she’d broken down over the realization that her husband wanted her dead, still remembers every single tear she’s wasted on him since.

“I’m sure it’s what _you_ would’ve wanted if the situation had been reversed,” she sneers at Kylo, because he doesn’t need to know about how torn up she’d been, about the month of bereavement leave Poe had forced her to take.

Kylo recoils and looks at her as if she’s just slapped him. “Rey, I never–”

She shakes her head, finally takes a step away. “ _Don’t_. Just… don’t. I don’t want to hear it, Kylo. You made yourself perfectly clear two years ago.”

“And so did you,” he scowls at her, “when you blew up my car _with me in it_.”

He was never meant to be inside the car, but telling him that now won’t change a thing.

“Why are you here?” Rey asks instead, mimicking his crossed arms and thunderous expression.

“Ah,” Kylo steps back, leans his broad frame against the door. “About that. I _might_ have blown my cover. They’re evacuating the Senator as we speak.”

That would explain the radio silence in his room; Rey doubts anyone would’ve bothered going back for the Senator’s things once they realized the First Order has dispatched their best assassin. “Great,” she scowls, bending down to grab her briefcase and slide her tablet back in. “That’s just great. It’s not like I wasted _three_ days staking this place out or anything.”

The bastard _laughs_. It’s a quiet chuckle under his breath, so similar to the ones he used to give her that Rey can feel her heart break all over again even as she ignores him. “You’re cute when you’re grumpy. I’d forgotten that.”

 _I’ve forgotten nothing_ , she wants to snap back at him, as if it’s a game and she’s winning by torturing herself with an endless loop of memories while he’s clearly moved on. “Move,” Rey demands instead, glaring at Kylo as he lounges against the door.

“I don’t think so, sweetheart.”

“ _Don’t_ call me that,” she hisses before using her briefcase to give him a not-so-gentle nudge. “And let me the fuck out of here.”

“Hey, stop that–” Kylo says, and she watches him reach for her wrist like something out of a dream, something out of her control.

God, he’s warm, he was always so warm and she loved him for it in the winter, put up with it even on the hottest night of summer because she couldn’t bear to sleep without his arms around her–

A sob lodges itself in her throat, and she yanks her hand away.

“Rey,” he breathes.

“Ben, please,” she whispers, her voice breaking on his name. “Just let me go.”

He laughs under his breath again, something sharp and bitter this time. “That’s harder than you’d think,” Kylo mutters, but he steps aside anyway and Rey doesn’t let herself think too much on that, doesn’t pause long enough to consider the possibilities before she’s reaching for the doorknob and darting out of the room.

She holds it together just long enough to drive home and send Poe an update on the situation.

And then Rey cries her heart out before she surrenders to exhaustion and dreams of a life she’ll never get back.

 

* * *

 

They keep meeting, and some part of Rey wonders if maybe he’s behind that, if he’s deliberately taking every opportunity to see her. The more practical, realistic part of her makes a mental note to ask Poe why she and the First Order’s premier assassin suddenly have so many targets in common.

Thankfully there’s no repeat of that day in the supply room, no more cryptic comments and heartbreaking laughs. Instead they share fleeting moments: a look across a crowded room, a brush of their hands as one runs from the other, his lips against her ear as he murmurs _better luck next time, sweetheart._

Rey finds her dreams shifting from memories of their marriage to memories of their first meeting in Takodana – the instant attraction, the way she almost cried the first time they had sex because nothing had ever felt so intimate before, the telltale soreness she’d woken up to that shouldn’t have been nearly as satisfying as it was.

She fell in love with Ben Solo shortly after, but first she’d fallen into bed with Kylo Ren – never mind that she wouldn’t figure that out until five years after the fact. But that’s the truth of the matter, isn’t it? Ben and Rey might have loved each other, but that first day together? That spark that ran up her spine the instant their eyes met? That was all Kylo Ren, deadly and on the prowl and so, _so_ devastatingly attractive.

Apparently _that_ hasn’t changed in the seven years since, because night after night Rey finds herself dreaming of the man who nearly killed her, the man who’s probably her nemesis at this point. Memories of the last time they ever fucked – in the ruins of their house, of their marriage, all high on adrenaline and betrayal – fuel her imagination, as if she needs any help imagining the look in his eyes when he snaps, the purposeful way he’ll stride towards her and pin her against the wall with a low growl in his throat, his hands spanning the entirety of her waist as he effortlessly lifts her…

In the end, Rey is the one who snaps.

They’re at a gala – par for the course when your target is a corrupt oil tycoon – and _fuck_ , she’d forgotten how well he fills out a tux.

Ben – _Kylo_ finds her in a crowd of three hundred people and she watches his gaze darken as he takes in her appearance, all artfully curled hair and distractingly low neckline. It sends a shiver down her spine, and Rey knows then and there that she’s about to make a huge mistake.

Guests are assigned a specific table and Kylo is _not_ supposed to be at hers – Rey would know; she’s spent the past week looking up her tablemates and their potential connections to her target – but somehow she turns around to find him sliding into the chair next to hers anyway.

“Hello, darling,” he says, loud enough to draw everyone else’s attention and guarantee that they’re watching as he drops a kiss on her temple. “Sorry I’m late. You look beautiful, as always.”

Rey leans in under the guise of nuzzling his neck and hisses, “What the _fuck_ , Ren?”

Kylo just pulls away and shakes his head at her with an indulgent smile. “I missed you too, honey,” he tells her, and she can feel the burn of everyone else’s eyes on them. Rey digs her nails into his thigh as Kylo turns to his left and begins to make small talk with a man she vaguely recognizes from her research, but instead of reacting all he does is bring his own hand to rest above hers and lace their fingers together.

Dinner is _torture_ , and made all the worse by the fact that they don’t exchange a single word throughout but somehow Kylo finds a way to keep them connected even when she pulls her hand away. He shifts to press his leg to hers, rests an arm around the back of her chair, even plays with a lock of her hair while he talks to the elderly couple sitting across from them.

As soon as the dancefloor is open, Rey excuses the both of them and yanks him to his feet. “Let’s dance, _honey_ ,” she suggests with an unbearably sweet smile, and Kylo doesn’t say a word as he allows himself to be led away from the table, past the dancefloor, and out of the ballroom.

“Rey, where are we–”

She yanks him into a darkened alcove and pulls him down for a hard kiss, all clacking teeth and sharp nails digging into his biceps.

Kylo pulls her closer and gently cups her face in his giant hands, slows her down and kisses her as if they still mean something to each other. “Rey,” he sighs, pressing their foreheads together.

When she opens her eyes, Rey finds a dopey smile on his face that’s utterly unbefitting of the moment. Kylo catches her staring and swoops in for another kiss, and she can feel the way his lips curve upwards as they move against hers. “No, no, _no,_ that’s not happening,” Rey insists as she wrenches herself out of his arms.

“What’s not happening?” Kylo asks, still smiling at her like an idiot as he leans down to bump his nose against hers playfully before he tries to kiss her again.

“This!” she cries in frustration, shoving him away with a firm hand against his chest. “You and your stupid smiles and the way you–” _kiss me as if you still love me_. “Argh!” Rey growls in a strangled voice, her palm slapping against the hard concrete behind her. “Is it so hard to get your enemy to hate fuck you against a wall? Is that _really_ too much to ask for?”

“Well,” Kylo catches the hand still on his chest and nonchalantly presses a kiss to her inner wrist. “I guess it is when your enemy happens to be your ex-husband who still loves you.”

Rey grows impossibly still, and she’s vaguely aware of Kylo looking up at her with his brows drawn together in concern, of his mouth forming words, but she’s too busy dealing with the fact that her world has been turned upside down to process what he’s saying.

“You can’t–” she chokes out, tears spilling over despite her best efforts to contain them, to contain herself. “You can’t just say something like that.”

Her tears appear to stun him, because Kylo drops her hand and steps closer, his face lined with worry as he whispers her name.

It’s a split-second window, but Rey’s quick enough to take it. She shakes her head and runs away before he can think to reach for her, and Kylo doesn’t come after her.

She doesn’t get the target again – he’s ruining her reputation and she should really hate him for that – but in the morning she learns that neither did Kylo, even though he had all the time in the world to do so and no one standing in his way.

 

* * *

 

She’s called into a meeting at noon, and spends most of the morning worrying that it’s going to be about her abysmal performance lately.

It’s a team meeting to discuss their latest assignments, and at some point Rey startles when she feels Finn tap her arm and looks up to find the rest of the room watching her expectantly.

“The team was wondering where we’re at with the Palpatine data acquisition,” Finn prompts her, and Rey steels herself before she rattles off what feels like a list of poor excuses to make up for the fact that they’re still working a case she should’ve closed a week ago.

“So, um, that’s where we are right now,” Rey finishes weakly, biting back a wince at her own incompetence. “But our next window of opportunity is coming up this weekend, and I’m confident Finn and I will be able to get what we need then.”

Finn nods. “Yeah, hundred percent. We’re definitely getting everything this time. Rose, you better prepare yourself because come Monday, you’ll have a whole decade’s worth of info to comb through,” he announces confidently.

“All right then,” Poe says with a clap of his hands, signaling the end of the meeting. “On that positive note, let’s get back to work. Great job, everyone. Finn and Rey, can you guys hang back, please?”

She knows what’s coming, but that doesn’t keep Rey from getting emotional when Poe shuts the door as soon as the last of the team has filtered out and immediately turns to her with a look of concern.

“Rey, are you okay?”

“Yeah, you’re worrying us a bit,” Finn adds as Poe comes to sit on her other side. “Is it…”

Rey blinks away tears and clears her throat, hopes her voice will come out steady. “He said he still loves me,” she finds herself whispering, gratefully clutching at Poe’s hand when he reaches out for her.

“Oh, Peanut,” Finn sighs as he wraps an arm around her, and she finds herself trapped in a group hug for a comforting moment before Poe pulls away.

“As your supervisor we’ll probably have to talk about this later,” he warns her with an apologetic grimace. “But as your friend… talk to us, Rey.”

A bone-deep exhaustion settled into her soul two years ago and has been there ever since. She’s tired of pretending everything’s okay, tired of acting like she’s moved on, tired of biting back a truth that threatens to escape her at least once every single day. So Rey takes a deep breath and lets it out.

“I wish none of this ever happened,” she confesses quietly, leaning against Finn for support. “I wish…” Rey closes her eyes and takes a shaky breath. “I wish we were still married.”

“Rey–” Poe says gently, putting a hand on her shoulder.

“But none of that _matters_ ,” Rey snaps, shrugs the both of them off and starts pacing the room as she urges anger to replace all of the weepiness in her system, “because he _lied_ to me. For fuck’s sake, we were thinking of starting a family together!” she reminds her friends. “He was going to let me bring a _baby_ into his web of lies.”

“Peanut…” Finn says hesitantly, and she catches him trading a wary look with Poe before he continues. “For what it’s worth… you pretty much did the same thing to him.”

Rey gapes at Finn for a few long, silent moments before she blurts out, “It’s not the same, Finn! He’s a _killer_. All we do is steal information.”

“Information,” Poe says slowly, reluctantly, his eyes fixed on his hands, “that usually leads to the downfall and eventual execution of our targets.”

Even Finn snaps his head up to look at Poe. “ _What_?”

“Since when?” Rey demands, all of the pieces slowly falling into place. She knows she should’ve gone to Poe earlier, should’ve demanded to know why she’s been running into Kylo pretty much every other day.

“I thought we were the good guys,” Finn says quietly, looking to Poe for answers.

Poe sighs and tugs at his hair. “We were. We _are_ ,” he amends, but it’s too late. “Look, things were different when Leia was in charge. Holdo tried to respect that as much as possible, but she’s… very practical,” Poe says diplomatically, even if the look on his face belies his true opinion on their boss. “Sometimes the big bucks – you know, the money we need to do all that great work of liberating tiny villages and rescuing children and stuff… sometimes those don’t always come from the good guys.”

Finn looks like he’s going to be sick. Rey places a steadying hand on his shoulder and turns to Poe. “So we’re… what? Mercenaries now?”

“Well, it’s not like we’re _actually_ killing anyone–” Poe attempts to placate them.

Rey has just about had enough unwelcome surprises to last her a lifetime. “God, is everything in my life a _lie_?” she demands, and promptly storms out of the room.

 

* * *

 

She and Finn complete the Palpatine extraction that weekend – no subterfuge, no playing dress-up, just a good old-fashioned B&E while Palpatine is away on business – but that’s the last assignment she actually puts any effort into.

It’s hard to get excited about stealing incriminating information when you know that data is probably going to get someone killed. And sure, she’s not naïve, she knows that’s always been a possibility in the past, but at least back then there was _some_ reassurance in knowing that the person most likely had it coming. Now… now she looks at her targets and researches their families and wonders if she’s going to make an orphan out of someone for no good reason.

Sleep proves to be elusive, and it shows. The next few times she runs into Kylo, his eyes linger with concern pinching his features. But he keeps his distance, probably for the same reason he didn’t chase after her that night.

He’s always been good at giving her space. _Too_ good, really, like that time he divorced her without even asking Rey for her opinion on the matter first.

They still brush past each other sometimes – she orchestrates more of these instances than she’d like to admit – and Kylo never says a word but there’s always the fleeting touch of their hands, or him tucking a curl behind her ear, or a feather-light kiss on her hair.

And always, _always_ , that look in his eyes: that Ben look he used to give her whenever he was worried for her, whenever he’d stay up the whole night just to soothe her or listen to her or hold her.

There’s a conference she’s supposed to infiltrate a month after their last conversation, but all of her doubts about the Resistance’s new leadership finally come to a head when she can’t find a single suspicious thing about their target – no pertinent information at all, really, except for the fact that it’s rumored that he has all the necessary data to take down a _very_ rich authoritarian regime in his home country.

Rey submits a tactical plan for approval, gets dressed and picks up all necessary props to go undercover, and immediately discards them – and her comm link – the second she spots him.

He hasn’t noticed her, is still glancing about disinterestedly like so many others around them as they wait for cocktail hour to begin. When Rey tugs on his sleeve, she swears he jumps a bit.

Ben looks at her with wide, curious eyes, and no words are exchanged before he’s following her down the hall and into an abandoned conference room.

“Rey, are you okay–”

She locks the door behind them and loops her arms around his neck, pulls him down for a kiss he’s all too happy to return. “Ben,” Rey murmurs against his lips. “Ben, I still love you too.”

“Thank _fuck_ ,” he sighs, picks her up effortlessly and sets her down on the table in the center of the room. It’s a low table, and he has to lean down even more to reach her this way, but Rey loves the way he curls around her, loves how it feels like he could block out the rest of the world if he had to.

“Run away with me,” she suggests when he begins to tug her shirt loose from her pencil skirt.

He freezes, fists his hands in her shirt as he pins her with a look of intense concentration that slowly gives way to understanding. “Rey, you’re… You mean it?”

“Screw the Resistance,” she nods, reaching out to undo his belt. “Screw First Order. Screw everything, all I care about is you. I know FO will probably hunt us down, and I can’t guarantee that Resistance won’t, but as long as we’re together–”

She sighs when Ben gently curves a warm hand around the side of her face, closes her eyes and nuzzles into his palm just because she can again. “I have a better idea,” he tells her with a kiss to her forehead, and then she’s blinking in confusion as Ben abruptly tugs her down from the table and does his best to tuck her shirt back in.

“Ben, what–”

“Come with me,” he requests, holding out his hand but making no move to take hers.

Rey recognizes the moment for what it is, places her hand and her trust and her life in his. “Okay,” she says without hesitation, and Ben smiles at her as brightly as he did on the day of their wedding.

 

* * *

 

He brings her to a safe house on the edge of town, a crumbling, abandoned bar that leads to what can only be described as an underground lair.

“I had one like this under the house,” Ben confesses easily, as if that’s a thing they can do now, talk about all the secrets they kept from each other during their marriage. “Trap door hidden under the washing machine.”

“You know how you always felt like the attic was too small?” Rey reminds him. “Half of it was hidden behind a false wall," she admits in return.

Ben shakes his head in amusement. “I _knew_ there was something wrong with those floor plans,” he chuckles.

It’s not that big of a lair, just a few shelves of gear and a bank of monitors at the far end. Ben leads her there, sits down on the one chair available and pulls her into his lap while he brings up file after file of incriminating evidence on his boss.

Rey watches information flit across the screen faster than she can process it. “Ben… what is this?”

“Insurance,” he shrugs, securing his arm around her waist. “As soon as you said you wanted kids, I knew I had to have a plan. I was going to retire the second you told me you were pregnant. This,” he gestures at the monitors, “was my way of making sure FO would leave us in peace.”

“ _Ben_ ,” she whispers in astonishment, her heart heavy with love.

He brushes a lock of hair away from her face, gently caresses the underside of her jaw. “I love you, Rey. I’ve always loved you, even when we were trying to kill each other.”

She doesn’t want to bring it up, doesn’t even want to think about it, but– “Then why did you divorce me?”

“God,” Ben groans, drops his head on her shoulder. “I didn’t want to, Rey. You have to trust me, that was the _last_ thing I ever wanted for us. But it was the easiest way to keep you safe from Snoke, because he only had two outcomes in mind for us: either I convinced you to join me and we became his dream team, or he ordered someone to take you out so that you wouldn’t be a distraction to me.”

“I thought… I thought maybe it was all a trick,” Rey confesses hesitantly, thinks of all the sleepless nights she’d stayed up to entertain the horrible, awful thought. “That you knew all along, and since the jig was up there was no point in staying married to me.”

He rears back to look at her. “Fuck, Rey, no, _never_ –”

“I know that _now_ ,” she assures him, runs a reassuring hand through his hair and scratches at the base of his neck in a familiar, soothing motion.

Ben sighs and leans into her touch. “God, when Phas showed me how you’d cried over the papers–”

She tries not to think of it, the pathetic mess she turned into when she woke up in her temporary motel room one day and found a thick envelope of papers waiting by her front door, the way her heart sank before she was even close enough to read the official-looking header because she just _knew_. Rey had cried for _days_ , sobbed until her throat was raw and her eyes were dry, and by the time she finally gathered the resolve to return them to his lawyer’s office, the divorce papers had been hopelessly stained by her tears.

“Shit, that was embarrassing,” she mumbles, resting her head on Ben’s shoulder.

“It gave me hope,” Ben shrugs, running a hand up and down her back. “But then you blew my car up–”

“You divorced me!” Rey reminds him. “ _Over the mail_! I’d like to think I was reasonably pissed,” she huffs. “But… you were never supposed to be in the car. It was just supposed to be a warning.”

“That’s why you called,” he realizes. “I always thought you just couldn’t go through with it.”

“I could _never_ hurt you,” she insists, shaking her head vehemently at the thought. “When I found out you were in the car… fuck, Ben, I’ve never been that scared. And then it blew up and I had no way of knowing if you made it out in time or if you’d gotten far enough and–”

She can’t breathe. The memory robs her of all oxygen and fear squeezes down on her windpipe so that no air can get in, and all she can picture is Ben’s corpse painted on the back of her eyelids every waking moment, every single second, _you killed him you killed him you killed him_ –

“Shh, shh,” Ben whispers soothingly, takes her hand and presses it to his beating heart. “I’m here, sweetheart. I’m right here. Just breathe with me.”

He looks her in the eye and takes exaggerated breaths, keeps doing it until she’s breathing along with him and the terror has left her system.

“I don’t know how I ever survived without you,” Rey marvels quietly, thinks of all the times she tried to convince herself she’d be fine, she’d move on, only to find herself getting lost in old pictures and videos instead.

“You won’t have to ever again,” Ben vows, leans down to seal his promise with a kiss.

“Ben?” she murmurs a while later, between kisses. “I’ve always wondered… why did you tell me your real name? That morning in Takodana – you could’ve used any other name, but you told me your real one anyway.”

“Well, I could hardly have my future wife calling me by a fake name,” he shrugs, hands reaching down to tug her shirt free.

“You couldn’t possibly have known you were going to marry me,” Rey frowns, the tail end of her sentence pulling up into a gasp when Ben slides his hands underneath her shirt and presses his scalding fingers to the cool skin of her waist.

“I just had a feeling,” Ben says vaguely, one thumb drawing circles into her hip. “I didn’t know that I was going to _marry_ you, but I knew I wanted to share as much as possible with you – everything from my name to my life.”

She presses a kiss to his neck for that, and busies herself with undoing the buttons of his shirt while Ben speaks. “How about you, though? Don’t take this the wrong way but… is Rey even your real name? Because I’ve _looked_ , sweetheart, and I couldn’t find a thing.”

“The orphan thing…” she pushes Ben’s shirt off his shoulders, and he moves to let it fall off his arms and to the ground. “That was all true. I don’t actually know my real name, but I do know Rey was a nickname. The only memory I have of my parents is of my father calling me that. So I decided to go with it,” Rey shrugs.

“Well, I love it,” Ben declares, pawing at the front of her shirt in an attempt to undo her buttons. “And you know I’ve always liked the sound of Rey Solo.”

Rey brushes aside his too-big hands and works on the tiny pearl buttons with her nimble fingers instead. “You do realize it’s Rey Niima again, right? Since you divorced me and all.”

“Oh, right,” Ben says, and Rey looks up from her buttons to find him reaching for a chain hidden by his undershirt. “About that–”

He pulls the chain free, and she spots two familiar rings dangling from it.

One is the band she slipped on his finger the day they got married.

The other is the ring she left on the floor next to his sleeping form when she slipped away from him and the wreckage of their house the day everything went wrong.

“Ben,” Rey gasps, tears springing to her eyes.

“Here, can you get up just a moment, sweetheart–” He eases her off his lap and to her feet, and Rey watches as he gets down on one knee the way he did the first time around, even though she’d insisted that he not because _Ben, it’s so old-fashioned and formal, you don’t need to–_

This time she lets him, too stunned to say a word.

He pulls her ring off the chain and clears his throat before he presents it to her. “Rey, I don’t care that half of our marriage was a lie and you destroyed my car and you can probably kill me with your pinky. I love you anyway. I’ll love you no matter what. Re-marry me?”

They’ve still got a million things to worry about, Snoke’s replacement and the Resistance coming after them and seven years’ worth of issues to work through, but together Rey knows they’ll be able to handle anything the world can throw at them.

After all, this time she knows what she’s getting herself into, knows that she’ll have a master assassin by her side as they take on the world.

She drops down to her knees and throws her arms around him, tackles him to the ground and kisses him senseless.

When they finally break apart for air, Ben unfurls his fist to reveal her ring, curled so tightly in his palm that it’s left an indent. “Is that a yes?”

Rey holds her hand out and watches a boyish grin light up his face as he sits up and slides the ring back where it belongs.

“Welcome back, Mrs. Solo,” Ben says lowly, pulls her back down to the floor with him.

“Hello again, Mr. Solo,” she giggles against his lips, shrieks with laughter when Ben yanks at her shirt and sends buttons flying across the floor.

Oh, well. What's one ruined shirt compared to a destroyed house?

**Author's Note:**

> This is a day late and nothing at all like the fic I set out to write, but I shirked a ton of Real Life responsibilities to write this (way more than I should have) so I'm posting it anyway. Maybe one day I'll have enough time and booze to write the smutty Mr. and Mrs. Smith AU of my dreams. Until then, I hope you guys enjoyed this hot mess.
> 
> As always, thank you for reading and please don't hesitate to leave a comment if you have any thoughts/questions/feedback/general fangirl squealing you'd like to get out of your system. I'm way behind on comments right now, but I'll definitely get around to replying and fangirling with you soon!


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